We get many species of woodpecker visiting the garden. This one is the Great Spotted (Dendrocopos major). Aside from the black, green and grey woodpeckers, the vast majority in our area look very similar and it’s often difficult to identify them. The Great Spotted is best identified by its long white shoulder patches.

A strange object I captured on the trail cam in the forest (photo frames, not video). It appears to be about a foot long, vertical and consists of 5 small equidistant ‘spots’. Bizarrely, it’s in the same location that we had a tree come crashing down in front of us today – the tree broke halfway up its height for no reason.
The object seems to move forward and then go upwards. There’s no way it’s an insect as they’re not out yet due to the cold. In the first couple of photos it’s to the right of the camera.

A 78 year old man from Prievidza (a town in the west of Slovakia) has died in hospital a week after being attacked by a stag. Apparently, it was a spontaneous attack as the man tended his orchard – the stag charged and skewered him with its antlers. More can be read here – noviny.sk – Stag Kills Man

Deaths from stag attacks are relatively rare, usually only one every so many years. Most often they’re during rutting season when people approach stags because they’re just standing still and not running away (which is because their brains are addled by rampant hormones). My kids and I were charged by one in the forest several years back and we had to hide behind a tree while it went berserk. 99.99% of the time the stag just flees though.

Cousin of the Pine Marten, Beech or Stone Martens are the bane of village life out here in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Slovakia. They plague attics and cause a lot of damage. My garden is littered with large chunks of roof insulation and their scat is everywhere. Also, they run around all night which echoes across the ceiling. They’re also extremely aggressive and will hiss and scream. The sound of them catching their prey, and its screams, a few feet above your head at 3 in the morning is a shock.
After months of problems capturing the marten on the trail cam as it was aware of the infrared, it seems to have become adjusted to it and I finally managed to get some good footage. It’s winter so the marten is redecorating my attic to make a nest. And shitting all over the place. Very thoughtful of it…

“I don’t know what the answer is. In time man gets used to almost anything, but the problem seems to be that technology is advancing faster than he can adjust to it. I think it’s time we started applying the brakes, slowing down our greed and slowing down the world.”

Dick Proenneke

Based on the 1968/69 journals of Dick Proenneke and edited/written by Sam Keith, later made into the documentary film “Alone in the Wilderness“, One Man’s Wilderness is simply mind blowing. It’s what many of us dream of doing – but we seriously don’t have the old school skills or determination of the legendary Dick Proenneke who, at 50 years of age, heads to Alaska, builds his own cabin with simple tools and then spends the next 35 years living in tune with nature.

The book is both inspirational and also a frustrating, tantalizing vision of what once was and what is now almost impossible. It’s the “modern” version of Thoreau’s Walden. Every modern book, film and TV series on Alaska started from this.